UN to set up human rights office in Uganda

The United Nations will establish a human rights office in Uganda next month in response to the abuses and rights violations resulting from the conflicts in the northern and eastern areas of the country, a UN spokesman said today.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) would not only monitor the situations, but would train local people and coordinate a protection strategy with the National Human Rights Commission and the UN Country Team, José Luis Diaz said in Geneva.

The human rights situation in northern Uganda was extremely delicate and very serious, but the Office had seen that having an international monitoring presence helped at least to prevent violations in a number of countries, he said.

He declined to say how many monitors would go, saying he could only give the figures after the formal agreement with Uganda was signed in the coming weeks.

Mr. Diaz said he did not think that OHCHR had a magic formula for solving the situation in northern Uganda, but what everybody could agree on as necessary was strengthening the international presence dealing specifically with human rights.

There was an international presence in Uganda dealing with the humanitarian situation, he added.

The Chief Prosecutor of the Rome-based International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said last July he was opening an investigation into the 18-year conflict in northern Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni formally referred the problem in December 2003.